Love set free: Tannersville attorney retires

Tannersville attorney Mark Love is retiring — this time for good — from the courtroom stage that earned him top honors from a national lawyers' magazine and the gratitude of hundreds of clients.

DAVID PIERCE

Tannersville attorney Mark Love is retiring — this time for good — from the courtroom stage that earned him top honors from a national lawyers' magazine and the gratitude of hundreds of clients.

Love, 62, is relinquishing duties as attorney for the Monroe County Assessment Board — the county agency that assesses property values for tax purposes. But he is probably best known as a criminal defense attorney, representing accused murderers to drunken driving suspects.

In the courtroom, he is known for a deceptively simple demeanor coupled with a keen legal mind. He has a flare for the dramatic, pausing for effect as he uses wit and humor to simultaneously entertain and engage a jury.

"I guess I was the last of the flamboyant lawyers," Love said Monday. "The courtroom is theater. It is the best type of theater because there is no script, per se, yet the parameters are set by the facts of the case.

"Some of the sheriff's deputies called me 'Preacher' and some called me 'Columbo' because I was hunched over," Love recalled.

Love, who has practiced law here for 35 years, was the first Monroe County lawyer, in 2005, to be named to Law & Politics magazine's Super Lawyers annual list.

The honor, based on ballots submitted by attorneys and reviews by the Minnesota magazine and the state Supreme Court's Disciplinary Board, ranked Love in the top 5 percent of Pennsylvania attorneys.

His specialty was defending drunken driving suspects.

"I was known as the dean of the DUIs," said Love.

He remembers winning one drunken driving case, following which the prosecuting attorney drove him home because Love's car was in the shop. The assistant district attorney made a surprising revelation to Love.

"It turns out he recommended to the client that he hire me," Love said.

A couple of months ago he was getting an oil change when a client he had represented years earlier approached him.

"Thanks to you, instead of going to jail I graduated from college," the man told him.

Love, a Philadelphia native, clerked for an Easton judge in 1976-77 before joining the Newman law firm in Stroudsburg. He eventually formed his own practice based in Tannersville.

The one-time president of the Monroe County Bar Association unsuccessfully ran for Monroe County judge in 1999. Despite that setback, Love had a successful track record for a defense attorney, once winning five cases in a row.

"I've agonized over my losses," Love said. "I've agonized over what I could have done differently or better."

His personal and professional life took a dramatic turn in 2006.

"Six years ago I had heart surgery and my doctor told me to take it easy," Love said. "I basically gave up most of my practice. It's just gotten too stressful for me."

He continued to serve as attorney to the assessment board, advising the board on tax appeals and representing the agency in court. He has served the assessment board since the county began its last simultaneous reassessment of all county property values in 1987.

"They wanted somebody with litigation experience to represent the county," he recalled, noting a large number of appeals was expected.

One of those appeals came from then-Monroe County Judge James R. Marsh, who challenged his own property assessment. This came after the judge ruled against the assessment office in another case by requiring prior law to take precedence over the new one.

An act of the state Legislature overturned the judge's ruling and upheld the reassessment, Love said.

When owners of the Middle Smithfield Township timeshares formerly affiliated with Fernwood Resort took the assessment office to court in 2011 in search of lower tax assessments, Love filed a successful motion asking that all county judges be disqualified from hearing the case. The judges had personal conflicts of interest with the timeshares' owners, Love argued, and the county court agreed, naming a retired Schuylkill County judge to preside.

But making that motion didn't make Love comfortable.

"You get looked at, to say the least," Love said.

The parties eventually negotiated a compromise assessment settlement.

Love put in more than 100 hours in the timeshares case, but always charged a flat fee for each litigation.

The number of tax appeals has mushroomed since the 2008 recession, he said. He once handled five court cases in an average year. In 2012, he handled 1,400 assessment board appeals, 53 of which went to court.

Now, Love is content to put down the law books, "shill" for the sale of his wife's watercolors, and visit a daughter and grandchild in Minnesota and a second daughter in New Zealand.

"It's really been a great ride," Love said.

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